Cobbie just sent me a link to David Geary’s article entitled Tipping Rails. David is wondering out loud if Ruby on Rails has reached a tipping point and is about to break out and garner mass adoption. I don’t really have any opinion on this topic but I do know that Ruby is stealing a lot of mind share from Java and even .NET. Dave Thomas introduced me to Ruby like thousands of others at one of the NFJS events and I’ve loved learning more and developing in Ruby. My copy of the Pickaxe book is looking pretty worn which is unbelievable as most technical books have a shelf life of about 3-4 weeks, if that.

I wish Ruby on Rails really gives Java a run for the money as competition is great and I hope Java and Rails force each other to get better. But I still see Java and Rails solving different problems. While Java or specifically Enterprise Java’s sweet spot is the large, distributed, scalable applications (See Cameron Purdy’s trading systems post on TSS), Ruby on Rails can fill the niche for small to medium web applications where time-to-market is the most critical item. I guess time will tell – In 2 years, the Ruby Insurgency will have taken hold and displaced Java and the must-learn language. And if Sun keeps coming up with more technologies like JSF, Rails will be the dominant web development framework.